


chasing ayano tateyama

by unhappyrefrain



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: F/M, Multi, Reincarnation AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-20
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-01-16 09:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1343140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unhappyrefrain/pseuds/unhappyrefrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not the first time she has died. (reincarnation AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> yooo i'm really excited to see the kagepro tag is getting active!!! i haven't posted much in here for a while, and this is something i've had in my drafts for a longgggg time, so i thought it might be of interest. special thanks to tumblr user sexybritishllama for processing this idea with me (and never writing me a kidokano)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for mentions of suicide.

The first time you see her she is standing next to the window in an empty classroom. She is watching the clouds distort and take shape outside in the summer heat. She notices your presence and turns around to face you and the red muffler she always wears settles down as the wind stops. You look at her and you turn away.

The second time you see her she is early again, and she's folding paper cranes on her desk, creasing the test papers into patterns over and over again. You watch her in your peripheral vision, and she seems to be smiling-- smiling or crying, you can't tell, and even if you were to move, you wouldn't want to know. She giggles to herself as she tucks the wings in on another failed test.

The third time you see her she looks like she's happy. You watch her pin up her hair and laugh even though there is no one beside her. She seems joyful, but she is alone. Maybe she's like me, you think. Maybe being around people makes her sad.

The fourth time you see her she sees you back. You catch her eyes after she turns over the paper and when she notices you looking at the number circled in red she gives a small laugh. "I'm stupid, so it can't be helped," she says, and you don't know if she's talking to you or someone else. But her eyes are on you. You could have sworn you were invisible before.

The fifth time you see her you can keep your eyes on hers for five seconds before you look away. The sixth time she smiles at you. Is it possible for anyone to smile while they are in your vicinity? The seventh time passes and by the eighth time you see her you crack a smile back. It's strange. It will probably take some getting used to. She tells you her name, in a quiet voice.

The eleventh time she walks you home in the middle of a warm summer rain. You don't offer her your umbrella, but she grins anyway. "I like the rain," she says, rivulets of it coming down her face and the ends of her hair dripping. "It's sort of magical."

The nineteenth time is strange because she's not smiling, and you look at her puzzled for a while, trying to figure out what's wrong with her. Then against your will you try for a smile and aim it at her and she giggles and the light comes back to her face. "I was waiting to smile till you did! I was testing you," she admits, and her hand brushes yours (although only slightly) when she turns the corner to the stairs.

By the thirtieth time you know you have stopped counting and you wondered if she ever was. It was hard for you to get up this morning and you hate yourself a little more than usual but she looks at you and smiles and again, the sun comes in. You keep your eyes fixed on the bright red hairclips she wears, trying to burn the image into your retinas.

* * *

Days later she is crying at her desk and you look at her from across the room, her arms wrapped protectively around some small shreds of paper. She notices you and her head comes up and you see her smile through her tears. You have never seen this before. She pulls the red muffler closer to her chest and looks out the window.

* * *

That is the last time you see Tateyama Ayano. But it won't be the last time she sees you. This is not the first time she has died, and it's certainly not her last. And when you lower the scissors to the exposed, jumping vein in your neck one year later, it's not yours, either.


	2. one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I didn’t know him. I’m sorry he died.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for self-harm and mentions of death.

You are thirteen and you wake up with a small pain in your throat.

It seems like the winter has gone on forever and now the small village has burst into spring, first poking its little fingers from the buds and then deciding to bloom. School is boring and mathematics is boring and everything about your existence seems boring. You perch on the balcony on your front porch, looking out into the misty spring. It has just rained.

The digital watch on your left wrist beeps nine in the morning and you swing your legs off the banister, still wet with dew, and clutch the school bag close to your chest as you start walking down the hill. You keep swallowing nervously, as though there’s something stuck in your throat, but you can’t figure out what it is.

* * *

In science class you cover your left eye with an eyepatch because some girls have been talking about liking boys who do that. It’s itchy and it shifts on your eyelid with an almost antagonistic persistence. There’s a gentle breeze at the back of your head and you turn around.

It was nothing, it really wasn’t anything, no windows were open and you yank the eyepatch from your head. A couple of girls sitting on the opposite side of the classroom giggle. So much for that, you say to yourself, as you throw the white gauze onto the floor below you in frustration. Your chest tightens and a vein in your neck throbs suddenly.

You fix your head forward, determined to stay calm, but you can’t stop looking through the wide classroom windows out of the corner of your eye, and directly below the classroom you see a lady sitting on the bench in the courtyard. She looks stock-still, paralyzed, save for the silent blinking of her eyes.

You swallow again and look to the other side.

“Ky _ou_ ya!”

One of the younger girls calls to you from the front of the classroom and you shrug. It doesn’t feel right. Your name has never felt right.

Out of curiosity you turn your head again to face the window and the woman sitting on the bench is gone.

* * *

The sun goes down too early for a spring evening, turning a vivid red as you tap your fingers together anxiously. The way home is long and you have no one to walk with, and all you’ve been hearing today is that girl calling your name-- is that even your name? Never fit you, it never seemed to define you, and you sigh and lift your arms above your head, trying to forget about the pounding sensation in your neck.

When you finally turn the corner into a busier street you feel the noise of the crowd wash over you. The sun has completely submerged itself now and the gentle buzzing is starting to wear down. It reminds you of a scene in a novel you read once where a boy and a girl stood alone at the top of a hill road, a train crossing, with a boiling summer sun setting behind them.

You turn around, reminded of an errand-- you were going to lend a book to your sister, but you had left it at school. It’s an instinctive movement, the turn is, and even though your eyes are focused on the road in front of you, a cool breeze taps on your cheek, as if leading you. You don’t have time for this, you decide as you clench your fists tighter around the handle of your school bag.

A name comes to mind.

“Ayano,” you shout, your eyes straight ahead, and you’re looking at the woman you saw outside the school, and she turns around-- but she’s not looking at you, why would she be looking at you? That couldn’t be her name-- Ayano, it seems nice, a name that seems familiar, or at least the way it sounds on your lips--

“...Ayano,” you say again, but it’s a softer call this time and she’s still looking at something beyond you, the red color of the briefcase she carries burning just as brightly as the sun in your eyes. “Ayano?...”

It comes to mind again and again, the strange name. You’ve never known an Ayano. Maybe the name of a family friend, one you met before you could remember? Maybe a character in a fantasy book...? “Ayano,” you say again, rolling the name between your lips.

The lady turns around and looks straight at you this time. At first you don’t believe it’s you she’s looking at, but when your eyes make contact with hers you know, and something clicks. The name feels right. It suddenly feels right. Everything about her feels--

“Are you lost?” she asks, and suddenly your stomach falls. Her eyes might be red, or it could be the sun. “Who’s Ayano?”

You turn and bolt.

* * *

When you get home you’re gasping for breath and your whole body feels like it’s not quite yours anymore. Kyouya. Kyouya, a middle school student, you have never known an Ayano. But you have never seen anything quite so red as you thought her eyes were when you turned around and ran. Kyouya. She was just a stranger, you think as your hands shake and you rip the bandages off the insides of your arms, _just a stranger,_ your heart beats in what seems like speech, convincing you, running jolts of pain down your scars, _just a stranger._

“Ayano.”

You say the name again and you’re digging your nails into the soft white skin of your arms and that voice is fading. “Ayano,” you repeat, looking at yourself with a new sort of hatred. “Ayano.”

The red marks where your fingers bite into your flesh are becoming white. You’re not hurting yourself. You don’t do that kind of thing.

“ _Ayano_.”

* * *

_Shintaro?_

* * *

Now that’s a name, your mother complains at the dinner table, and what a mess of a boy, too. You never knew him, but he died somehow, quietly without anyone noticing.

“Shintaro? Yeah,” you say, nonchalantly, but your fingers are tapping together under the table. “I didn’t know him. I’m sorry he died.”


	3. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You dream that you are watching a young girl at the edge of a fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for family death and (sort of?) suicidal ideation but not really

The winter has set into your bones and that's why it is such a surprise when you notice a small bird chirping at your window after a snowmelt. The spring is nowhere near close and your heart has shut all its windows, but you continue to stare at the fragile bird, hopping around on your windowsill, with what looks like a red scarf around its neck.

You close your eyes as the sun comes in and then vaguely remember a flash of crimson red in the wind before your eyes open again. It burns its afterimage into your eyes, the image is so brief but strong, and you wince as you close the shutters and turn away.

* * *

You are sixty years old today and you are unhappy. You have always hated winter-- just another reminder of how old you are growing, and how cold the world becomes. This whole time you have been waiting for the end of your life, waiting for that train to come, no children to carry on the pieces of the legacy you never had. You lost the one you loved before you could ever tell her, and it's been winter forever, your hair growing long and gray and your fingers shriveling from the cold.

The bird taps at your window with its beak. You turn back to the kitchen counter and take the cup of instant coffee out of the microwave. Completely black. There's nothing in the pantry but canned soup and uncooked rice, beans and lentils. You don't ever go out and your younger sister tends to yell at you over the phone. "Go buy your own damn food, for once," she says, “get out of that old house and go for a walk or something,” and you can hear her grip is crushing the receiver. She is so angry that you will not leave.

There’s a strange ache in the side of your neck. You take a sip of your coffee and feel your wrinkled eyes cracking open. Your sister calls, and the sudden ringing sound startles you so much that you drop the mug-- it’s piping hot, and you fall off your chair, fumbling with your hands as you try to get the burning liquid off your skin, and you suddenly long to be cold again. It’s painful, and your body aches, and it’s as if the coffee has seeped into the gaps between your bones.

You pick up the phone.

“Sorry, I fell over again,” you grunt, still clutching at your stomach. “The ringing scared me.”

“God, I can’t believe you. Do I have to come over there and take care of you?”

“No.”

“Do you need me to pick up some food?”

“Fine.”

She hangs up.

You look back at your life from what seems like far away, and sigh, at first quietly but it soon spirals into a long and deep sound of disappointment. Disappointment with your whole existence, with your nonexistent legacy, with your sarcastic nuisance of a little sister and your long-gone understanding of what it meant to be alive.

You're still on the floor when the window blows open and the robin from before flutters in, capriciously flapping its wings through the room before landing on the wooden table and picking at some crumbs. You shout, but it doesn't seem to affect the bird at all, and you don't even bother to get up to shoo it away.

So you lie on the clicking tile and look dazedly at the indifferent ceiling, and you can't even bring yourself to sigh as the robin beats its wings frustratedly and lands on the linoleum next to you.

Wake up, it seems to be saying, impatiently, like an old worried friend, wake up, and in response you close your eyes and sleep.

* * *

You dream of a rooftop, of youth. You dream that you are watching a young girl at the edge of a fall. She's already hopped the fence and her bright red scarf flows almost nostalgically, like the river of your own blood. You've only just come up the stairs and she's already made what looks like the decision, but even so you call out, not even a name but just, "you--"

She turns to you from the edge of the rooftop and you notice her feet are rocking at the curb, half alive and half in the grave of the ground three floors below. As she faces you, you see her eyes, familiarly sparkling and strikingly crimson red, and it startles you so much you fall backwards.

When you finally push yourself up from the concrete, she is gone, all but a red scarf that has been left moving upward in the wind.

* * *

Your eyes flutter open, waking from the dream, and light assails you from above, the buzzing fluorescent lamplight of the kitchen ceiling. The doorbell rings, and you realize it’s not the first time-- your sister has been standing there for five minutes, and you push yourself up leaning on the table for support and walk over to the door.

“Sorry,” is all you say when she storms in, eyes narrowed, clutching a bag of groceries to her chest. Silently, she pulls out five TV dinners and a pack of instant rice, and sets them on the table in front of you.

“I just get worried,” she says, folding the paper bag into neat corners and shoving it in the recycling bin. “Since Seija passed away all you’ve been doing is sitting around and wanting to die, and who’s going to stop you if you do anything stupid--”

“I wouldn’t do anything stupid, I’m too weak to even--”

“No, you know what? You’re making excuses for yourself so you can rot away in here and just--”

“I said, I wouldn’t do anything--”

A long and warbling chirping sound comes from outside the kitchen window. Both of you pause. Her hand is raised; your knuckles are white on the counter. The robin stands, as if trying to intervene, balanced right on the windowpane, and the red is almost blinding when you look at it. It reminds you of something-- a rooftop, a paper crane-- eyes that glowed--

“Seija was _your_ sister, too.”

“I know that! And I always have to act like she was just yours because you’re the only one still fixated on her! I’ve moved on! I keep her picture, and I keep her memories, but I don’t let her keep me anchored to the spot! That’s the difference between you and me!”

“ _Listen_ \--”

“Take your food. Just. Take it,” she snaps, swinging around in a fury, toward the door. When she slams it, rattling the walls around you with the strength, the bird does not even budge. Its eyes stare up at you, almost curious.

You wait for the putter of her engine to fade from the driveway, and then, purely on a whim, you open the screen door. The sunlight hits you in the face, and it hurts-- but it’s a beautiful, unfamiliar hurt. You hear the singing of the robin from your right, and then you stretch out your hand, tentatively. It wings over to you, and rests its legs on your forearm, unbidden and unafraid.

“What… on Earth is your deal,” you whisper, half to yourself.

The robin gives a trilling chirp.

You leave the door open.


End file.
